


eye on the big picture (picture keeps getting bigger)

by Anonymous



Category: Push (2009)
Genre: Drabble Sequence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Underage, Injury, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25371766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Cassie sees lots of things. Not everything.
Relationships: Nick Gant/Cassie Holmes
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45
Collections: Anonymous, Multifandom Drabble 2020





	eye on the big picture (picture keeps getting bigger)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> Title from "Hour Follows Hour" by Ani Difranco.

  
  
Seeing the future is easy. Understanding it is hard. Changing it can vacillate between inevitable and impossible, depending on the length of the timeline. Cassie's getting better at it.

It's more complicated when people don't _listen_.

“You could have warned me,” Nick grumbles, and seriously? This is not on her.

“I told you to go the other way!” she snaps. Nick was never going to win that fight, but he could have avoided crashing through the window. Except he didn't, and now Cassie has to deal with the fallout.

“ _I told you to go the other way_ ,” he mimics, then yelps when she yanks a huge shard of glass out of his back.

“You're an idiot,” Cassie says, because he is, but she's more careful with the tweezers after that. By the time she's finished, Nick's dozing underneath her, his face mashed into the hotel pillow.

She likes the scar he's going to get, a little jagged curve along his shoulder blade. It almost looks like a C. Cassie reaches out, her hand hovering somewhere between present and future, and traces the rest of her name.

Nick twitches. “What're you doing?” he mumbles.

“Nothing,” Cassie says. “Go back to sleep.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Nick's been in the bathroom for twenty minutes when Cassie finally loses her patience and barges in. 

“Oh my god, just stop," she says, before he cuts himself again. "You have the shaving skill of a middle schooler.” She snatches the razor from his hand and points at the toilet. “Sit.”

Nick eyes Cassie warily while she straddles his leg, his hands holding her steady at the waist. He gulps when she tips up his chin, his adam's apple bobbing. “Don't slit my throat, alright?”

“That'll be a lot easier if you stop talking,” Cassie mutters. She's trying to concentrate.  
  


* * *

  
  
“It's pretty sturdy,” Cassie says, while Nick examines the room's fire escape. “But the ladder won't extend all the way, so watch your knees when you jump.”

"That sounds ominous."

"Not really." Cassie shrugs off Nick's look. “We have a week." It's her first time in Paris, and she wants to see the Louvre outside of her head.

She bolts upright before dawn. Something changed. “We have to go," she says. "Now.”

Nick scrubs his hand across his face. “A week, huh?”

She's better than she used to be, but she still screws up sometimes.

They run. Division keeps coming.  
  


* * *

  
  
She keeps seeing Nick die.

That's not new, exactly. She's been seeing Nick die since before they even met. But those visions dissolved and reformed every hour, and this is the same every time: Nick's face drawn with fear, blood on his hands, flowers in the air. 

Her mother taught her how to pull at threads, to weave the future into different shapes, but this is warp, not weft, and nothing she does will shift it.

Nick's gaze falls heavy on her while she drinks. “What aren't you telling me?”

“I don't know yet,” she says. “I'm working on it.”  
  


* * *

  
  
In Jakarta, everything smells like jasmine. Cassie's on edge for days, second-guessing every instinct. It's almost a relief when they finally come.

She lunges toward Nick. 

Her chest is on fire. Nick is shouting words she can't understand, his hands wet with blood. Her blood. 

The threads pull tight. Mom would be proud.

“Stitch,” Cassie gasps. It's so hard to breathe. “Three blocks east. Green door.” 

She wakes up in an unfamiliar room. It's dark, and Nick's head is heavy on her hip. His shoulders shake when she touches him.

“Never do that again.” His voice is hoarse. “Promise me.”  
  


* * *

  
  
She won't. She doesn't. 

Nick barely speaks to her for a week, and then he just wants to fight. It's total bullshit.

"You could have died!” he shouts, like Cassie didn't know what she was risking. "I thought I was watching you die."

"I watch you die almost every day. You'll get used to it." She tries to sound flippant, but her throat's too tight.

Nick softens. He's got her by the shoulders now, his body close. “I'll be more careful,” he swears. He won't be. Cassie's already seen him break that promise a dozen different ways.

She shakes her head. "You aren't someone I can lose."

“I know that,” Nick says, chastened. "Cassie, I know." He tugs at a loose strand of her hair, then tucks it behind her ear. "Neither are you."

"It's not the same.” He doesn't mean it like she does.

“ _Cassie_ ,” he says. “It is.” His eyelashes flick down. He's watching her mouth. “You have to have seen this," Nick says desperately. "You see everything. You have to know that I—”

He cups her face unsteadily, his thumb grazing over her lip. She trembles. 

“Tell me to stop,” he begs, but she doesn't. 

She won't.  
  
  



End file.
